HYDERABAD: In a setback to the Telangana government and individual property holders of Gurukul Ghatakesar Trust lands in Khanamet and Izzatnagar villages near Hitec City in Serilingampally mandal in Ranga Reddy district, the High Court on Friday refused to modify its orders passed in 2012 holding that the lands belonged to the Trust.
On September 9, 2012 a division bench directed that the entire extent of 627 acres of the Trust stand restored to the Trust and the state government shall compensate the Trust by way of exchange or by allotting equal extent of land elsewhere around the city.
The bench also directed that the government shall frame a special scheme to regularise lands of the Trust which are in occupation by third parties/housing societies/welfare associations, and constitute a special committee with officers of the rank of commissioner together with representatives of the Trust and occupiers to arrive at a rate for regularisation.
The court ruled that the government shall utilise the regularisation fees received from the occupiers for allotting an alternative land to the Trust.
Aggrieved with the said verdict, the state government and the individual occupiers filed separate review petitions before the High Court seeking modification of the orders. The government submitted that it was not in a position to buy alternative lands in view of financial burden. As the petitioners put it, the land belonged to one Badrinath who handed it over to the trust in 1951 through a gift deed. The trust holds 627 acres at Izzatnagar and Khanamet. Later, trust president Kishanlal or his general power of attorney sold away these lands to the Ayyappa Cooperative Housing Society and other housing corporations and individuals.
The individual property owners said they had purchased the lands by paying huge amounts to the so-called landowners and were unable to pay regularisation fee as per the present market rates.
Maintaining that the controversy was the result of the government’s acts and omissions and also of the violation of the court’s order in 2001, a division bench comprising justices Vilas V Afzulpurkar and B Siva Sankara Rao dismissed the two review petitions Friday.